My analog-world friends had been telling me for the last few years I should be online and expressing myself in writing for a larger audience if I wanted to impact the world in a more significant manner. One of them in particular, an existential philosopher, when I would express my concerns about how the world is developing would always ask, "Well, what are you doing about it?"
In my analog-life I do what I can in little or larger ways regularly. As an educator for many years and having the benefit of teaching in a relevant discipline, I have been able to reach out to thousands of young minds over the years and sow the seeds of critical thought about how the world is run.
But to do so digitally? It was (and is) daunting in a way that person-to-person interaction isn't, the communication isn't fluid, it is broken up into blocks. You can't see people's body language or facial expressions, something that I am very sensitive to. You don't get the fail-start sentences or innumerable other vocal indications that indicate everything from sarcasm to uncertainty and immeasurably enrich communication. I was concerned going digital would be like Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park with people just walking by.
Most relevant to your post here, Deva, I was also concerned about the ability to be silenced. Google instituted the memory hole, and while the websites are merely delisted from the search index, it is very effective for a vast majority of the population. All of the other social media sites have also instituted shadow banning or adjusted their logarithms to suppress dissenting opinions and perpetuate the illusion of consensus, which in turns affects consensus through the mechanism of herd-think.
I did try out Facebook, years ago, and one of the first things I did was share a link to Rivero's All Wars are Bankers' Wars. Within a week it hit the news feed that FB was restricting the link, YT also engaged in a removal campaign that ultimately failed because too many people kept reposting it (I was listening to Rivero at the time, I can't find a write-up on the event). To go with that, basically any centralized site can go offline etc.
When I found out about Steemit and its use of blockchain, my interest was piqued. I actually pondered the issue of joining Steemit for about three months. I was torn and it wasn't an easy decision. On one hand, whatever I wrote or contributed would be maintained for posterity, a sort of free-speech guarantee not available on other digital platforms. On the other hand, given the persecutory environment for politically incorrect, non-SJW, anti-authoritarian thought, contributing something that cannot be deleted could prove disadvantageous should a state actor decide to retroactively prosecute any new law passed regarding non-orthodox speech (the embarrassment of typos that last forever was also in the mix). As we see in the EU today, people are already being fined, arrested and harassed for having a non-politically correct opinion. In the US people are losing their jobs for daring to go against the mob tyranny of the SJW movement. (Imagine if I was at a US university and my discussion of meritocracy was lobbed into a safe space). The potentiality for raising my voice to have serious ramifications for a life hard-won (and hopefully with many years still before me) was concerning.
Ultimately though, it was the inability for my contribution to be irrevocably memory-holed (or at least the difficult nature of doing so) that convinced me to at least try Steemit. As you have seen, I have started cautiously. But some part of me suspects the world is ramping up to a showdown of sorts between the tyrants and the freedom-loving and I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I sat it out on the sidelines just to save my skin.
Blockchain technology, as you said, has the potential to revolutionize how history is viewed, written, edited, passed on, preserved and interpreted. It is a grand experiment the likes of which history has never seen before. Even if Steemit perishes, the information on the blockchain can be absorbed or integrated into another, a database that could in theory at least, last forever. That is an exciting opportunity, the very idea that these words could be read in a thousand or hundred thousand years. Well, that was a bit rambling, but I hope it was at least interesting! Yours - CZ
Well I for one am glad you are here. I also see you have a bit of a problem I share. We often write long replies that likely would have been better suited as our own post so as to potentially reach a larger audience here on steemit. On the other hand I like long replies at times. I will do so if the inspiration calls. If I then think it worthy of its own post I will sometimes go and write a post as well.
Blockchain tech can change the world, and I believe that is unavoidable. It is a tool. Like any tool it can be used for malevolent or benevolent purposes. We are on an open blockchain here, but that does not mean the government could not embrace blockchain and push one upon us that is not open. In otherwords, it could be turned against us. Thus, we must remain vigilant and continue to breathe life into the blockchains we like for as they grow and are used they become increasingly difficult for them to stop.
This blockchain for example they would need to find and stop around 100 witnesses (and growing) spread around the world. Some of these may be easier to stop than others (how many of them use Amazon for their hosting for example, those are actually easy to target, or Azure by Microsoft?). Yet they cannot stop them all and new ones can be created.
This is how it is kept alive. The top 19 witnesses are the active ones and they are rewarded a decent amount of steem for their work. That is pretty lucrative for them when steem is worth a good amount.
We vote on them and people run campaigns to be one on the blockchain.
With that said I've seen what I would call soft censorship here before, it is getting better. I call it that because a powerful person deciding they don't like something might vote it down so it only makes $0. If the person doesn't rely on funding for their work at all then perhaps that does nothing to them. If they do rely on the funding to be able to produce their piece then that can be just like someone pulling funding in real life. Were they technically censored? I think it is word play a bit, as I do see it as repression and potentially censorship when it happens. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often and with HF19 it is easier for us to counter than before.
People can also be down voted and their content hidden without clicking SHOW HIDDEN, or REVEAL. This is needed to protect against things that people should have to option to view and to rid the feeds of things like spam and such.
Yet it can also happen for disagreement which I am very strongly against. This technically is still in the blockchain if you DIG, but how many people will dig, or know how? This can be like your delisting you referenced with google.
However, this is totally open source. Nothing is stopping any of us that can code or want to learn to code from writing a variation of steemit that unearths that stuff.
The websites steemit, busy.org, chainbb, esteem, etc are themselves centralized. The blockchain (e.g. storage and file system) is decentralized.
So if they ever do attack this project they could take down steemit. Yet that is not destroying the data or the blockchain. It is open source and we could have another site up in very short time. That is much like someone walking into your house to smash your TV to stop the signal going through the air (back when we still did VHF/UHF) when all that really did is delay you until you found and tuned in another TV.
Yes, we both seem to like lengthy responses, when communication is chunked it just seems to work better for me that way. I did read between the lines there a bit that I should perhaps be formulating some of my longer replies into stand-alone posts, which is a really good idea. I don't generally know when I start a reply how long it will become.
Your insight into how the blockchain here works is really useful for me. Unfortunately I never had more programming than a bit of basic and c+ way way back in high school, and most people not even that. That is why I mentioned that for most people, very simple forms of data suppression are quite effective.
I have been reading valued-customer's "Steemit and the End of the World" series, and he has made some good points. One I raised in a reply was that any random oligarch with an NGO (Soros anyone?) agenda could buy a few million worth of steemit and staff it with a cyber downvote squad to suppress alternative narratives. This touches on the downvotes for opinions you mentioned, and I see that Steemit still has some development ahead of it. Nevertheless I am happy to have taken the plunge and be on ship.
Yes, that can and likely will happen at some point.
The only HOPE there is that purchasing so much steem drives the value of all the steem those of us that already have it up. You could power down. Such activities of down voting would likely drive some people away and cause steem to drop. You can wait for it to drop and buy more with what you powered down.
Also it is easier in the blockchain to PROVE they are doing that, and if need be to group counter up against such activities.
That said it's a pretty new world here... with it will come new problems we haven't even experienced yet.